Research Interests
Mechanics of Bacteria: how bacteria mantain their cell shape
Fast growing bacteria, like Bacillus subtilis or Escherichia coli, duplicate in only about 20 minutes and they efficiently and robustly retain their shape during growth. My main interest is to understand how the mechanical properties are generated within the cell wall and how their mantainance is essential to control cell shape. My work focuses in understanding how the cell wall architecture is designed to withstand the turgor pressure, thus to regulate cell morphology.
Control of Cell Growth-Rate through Physical-Forces
In the last few years it has been discovered how physical factors, such as turgor pressure or membrane potential, are critical for the regulation of cell growth. My goal is to understand how these factors integrate with the molecular pathway that also dictate growth rate.
To address these questions, I am looking at growth at the single-cell and population level, combining molecular biology methods with computational analysis and mathematical modeling.